LAUNCH Q&A

Is that all?
No! On Monday I’ll start the next game in the series. It will be like Captain Forever and Captain Successor, but better. When it’s finished it’ll be released to all Captain Forever supporters. Then, with any luck, I’ll start building another Captain Forever game for you.

Thanks Farbs! I love you. Is there anything else I can do to help?
Yes! You can tell everyone you know to play Captain Forever. They don’t have to support it, and hell they don’t even have to like it. It’d just be rad if they gave it a try. Thanks!

I really like Captain Forever. Haven’t bought Successor yet, but probably will when I tire of Forever. One request/idea:

At first, the ‘rebuild under pressure’ disappointed me, because tinkering is fun. However, I can see how the game would be less replayable if we had unlimited time or a ‘safe zone’ to perfect ships in. I’d enjoy a simple blend of the approaches. We’ve all seen games where you can pickup a ‘stopwatch’ that freezes time for a few seconds. Maybe something like that. If you wanted to fit it in without changing the interface much, you might consider modeling it as a module, installed on enemy ships so you could pick it up as booty. This module, when installed, grants an extra N seconds during the next ‘rebuild’, after which it disappears. In other words, it can’t be invoked at any time, and it can’t be saved for long.

You don’t need a free/safe zone. Just capture or stay with two or three enemy command modules. No more ships will show up (if three), only one (if two). Kill them or move away when your ready to engage the enemy again.

captain forever is amazing! im on the fence as to whether or not i want to pay for successor, 20 bones seems a little steep. that is unless there was some type of mmo component, which would make this game hugely popular, then i’d pay anything.

is there some documentation on the new modules in successor anywhere? i think that’d help me decide

This game sux big phat hairy monkey balls. The controls are iffy at best, and by the time you have an even half decent ship put together every other muther fuqer on the board already has a ship that can blast all of your weapons and engines to $h!t. Oh I know, that just means I have to move faster right? I’d luv to but your piece of $h!t game doesn’t give an opportunity for that as the big bada$$es are ontop of you before you can do anything even remotely useful. Oh! and they are incredible shots too. I’m a fair aim with a gun but these @$$holes are downright phenomenal. If we had sharpshooters in the Marines like you have on the fuqed up game we’d own the fuqing planet cuz noone could ever beat us in a war. In short this glop of goat snot you call a game is nothing more than your pants on head retarded attempt at making yourself feel like you are somehow a ‘game’ programer. TOTAL FAIL!!! thank you for playing please try again.

so i played capforever and i loved it, then i finally broke down and bought captsuccessor, and i was disappointed (a little). Here’s why.

1. in capforever you can usually kill the ships AND keep most of the goodies (guns, boosters), but in successor, i found myself struggling to find enough weapons/boosters to stay in the game after killing other ships. (in other words, if u destroy a girder, let the weapons and stuff fall off, instead of making them get destroyed too.)

2. in capforever, the girder styles of the rainbow ships are way cooler than in successor, and their weapons seem more powerful for some reason as well.

3. successor needs more ships of all one color, and less of unbalanced, freaked-out mash-ups of items

4. in successor, the fact that the rainbow ships all look like you really is not so great, especially when you only have your little module running around. i did the math…in order to kill a solo rainbow “bubbles” module with your default pea-shooter, it takes you at least 15 minutes, given you can keep one in your sights long enough to get repeated shots at it (NOT FUN AT ALL). Just bigger, badder ships would be fine.

5. in forever, the ships will fire at eachother more effectively when they are close to eachother (which does the dirty work for you), but in successor, it takes a LOT more work for that to happen, which is less “fun” and more “damn it!”.

6. Missiles should not be able to target or hit you, if you are the one firing them. I stay away from them altogether because of this, though i wish they were usable.

7. I would rather that there is a more even distribution of item types than to get one game where EVERYTHING is sniper guns, and another where EVERYTHING is translocators, etc. Why don’t white and rainbow ships have translocators or time-shifters (which seem way under-powered to me for their rarity)?

8. If i play successive games, please don’t make me start with green AGAIN. At least let it go up to red (but no farther) given the number of successive games i’ve played.

9. Big Light Blue Laggers (huge flying wings with a lot of firepower) are ships that often make the game lag…fyi if you didn’t know already. Also in the lag department, the “bloom” is pointless. It just makes things all blurry. Can’t the actual graphics of the ships be cooler somehow? Also, i do like the “musical vocoder/gate” thing you did when the lasers fire…but there is a “pop” at the beginning which could use a smoother curve…small detail, i know.

10. MMO!! MMO!!! MMO!!!! Seriously. I want to play real people, and have my own name, and have my own “chat quotes/lingo” that i can talk trash with.

Just wanted to give you some feedback…love the game and i wish u luck!

It’s really bizarre. On the one hand this game is a natural fit for me. It’s quirky, well-presented, and as a 2D space shooter, belongs to one of my favorite genres of all time. In fact after playing it for a couple of hours I easily plunked down the $20 for Successor. That said, while I liked the idea of donating a few bucks to help out a fledgling indie game, I probably wouldn’t have spent that kind of money if that were not the case. After only playing 3-5 hours on Forever and another on Successor, I’m officially bored.

The fact it, the game just isn’t that fun. While I like the overall concept, the game is slow, tedious, and repetitive. Also, the AI seriously needs work. Having to build on the fly is all well and good, but it’s just not that well-implemented.

Dragging parts around after a while is, well, a drag. When your ship consists of hundreds of parts, you shouldn’t still need to click and drag every tiny piece on and off ad nauseum just to rearrange a single section of your ship (which, on top of being highly annoying, is horribly imprecise – even when fully zoomed in, which you CAN’T, since ships can appear literally out of nowhere). It would also be nice if capturing ship segments didn’t involve dozens of clicks for the same reason.

For that matter, blowing up connecting portion of an enemy ship or your own ship should not destroy everything connecting to it. If I can disable and capture a large chunk of an enemy ship without killing its command module, I should be able to do so (and without the hassle of reconnecting every single piece). Finally, the idea that you can “trap” command modules in order to prevent ships from respawning is retarded. Full stop. This is just horrible design. In fact there are just too many exploits to go into that need fixing.

All in all I still think it’s a nice little sandbox simulation, but it could have been so much better. As a casual game it’s too maddeningly anal and unforgiving, but it isn’t really rewarding enough for those willing to spend the time to master it, since it relies on mostly gimmicks in order to progress. Successor solves some of the latter problem, but to be honest takes away a lot of the minimalist qualities that made Forever unique and interesting in the first place.

This game sux big phat hairy monkey balls. The controls are iffy at best, and by the time you have an even half decent ship put together every other muther fuqer on the board already has a ship that can blast all of your weapons and engines to $h!t. Oh I know, that just means I have to move faster right? I’d luv to but your piece of $h!t game doesn’t give an opportunity for that as the big bada$$es are ontop of you before you can do anything even remotely useful. Oh! and they are incredible shots too. I’m a fair aim with a gun but these @$$holes are downright phenomenal. If we had sharpshooters in the Marines like you have on the fuqed up game we’d own the fuqing planet cuz noone could ever beat us in a war. In short this glop of goat snot you call a game is nothing more than your pants on head retarded attempt at making yourself feel like you are somehow a ‘game’ programer. TOTAL FAIL!!! thank you for playing please try again.

It seems that enemy ships are generated randomly. It would be much better if the same ships were in the same places every time, or at least that they all started at the same places. Like a huge universe full of activity where you can go to different places.
Let ALL classes of ships be there from the beginning…

Let all wreckage stay floating in space until the player or enemy ships salvage it or destroy it.

Definitely worth $20, for Captain Successor alone.
One little thing that kinda bugged me though was that if two ships get into a conflict, any missiles fired always fly in my direction, and the radio messages usually blame me.
Alliances might be nice, too.
Aside from that, the game is perfect. You need to keep several factors in mind when installing modules, and there’s a nice hierarchy of power that you can slowly climb your way through. Building under pressure gives it a little more urgency, and you’ll always feel prouder of what you’ve created. And the graphics are pleasant to look at. Oh, and the sound effects of the ship weapons. And the other little touches, like the info buoys, and ships that refer to you as ‘friend’. And a whole assortment of other details, but I’ll stop here.
Also, what game is Larry talking about? It doesn’t sound like any I’ve played recently.